Interview With Burl Osborne and Carl Leubsdorf of the Dallas Morning News

January 8, 1985
U.S.-Soviet Talks in Geneva

Q. Can we ask you, since our time is limited, if you can tell us anything about what's been going
on in Geneva? Because that's what I think everyone is the most interested in.

The President. Well, let me just say there isn't too much I can tell you right at the moment. But I
have just finished talking to George Shultz, and the meetings are concluded. And in 45 minutes,
by our time, George will be addressing the press over there, making a statement to the press and
probably taking some of their questions.

And then he will be home. Some of the others are going to stop by other heads of state, like Bud
McFarlane's going to go to see Mrs. Thatcher and, I think, also in France and Italy and brief
others of our allies on what took place. And George will be here to brief me tomorrow afternoon.
And then I'll know more when they start asking questions at the press conference tomorrow
night.

Q. Are you pleased with what's happened? I mean, has it met what you expected?

The President. It sounds very good. I don't want to go any further than calling attention to what
George is going to say, but I think we're going to see meetings that will be arranged shortly,
meetings to negotiate nuclear weapons and space and all.

Q. But this would really meet what you had hoped? Have we gotten from this what we had hoped
to get?

The President. Yes, this is all this meeting was supposed to do is to establish procedures for
negotiations. I'm afraid some of the people overlook that. And I'd flinch a little when I would see
references, and particularly on the air, as if this was supposed to be the arms negotiation. No, this
was to set up the procedures.

Q. But there was always a question whether it would, in fact, set up the procedures.

The President. That's right, yes.

Q. From what you're saying, the announcement will tell us that it, in fact, has.

The President. I think that's what George will be telling people in 45 minutes.

Federal Budget

Q. Okay. I guess we'll switch it to domestic issues. The Senate Republicans are planning to put
out a budget several days before you put out your budget. And there has been information from
White House officials in recent days that they don't think you'll be able to reach the targets that
had been established about a month or so ago for deficit reduction. Do you think that this process
is moving away from the White House? Do you think there's some danger you may be dealt out of
this process?

The President. No, not at all. As a matter of fact, I'm perfectly willing to have the Senate do that.
I think that in working together they may have some ideas we didn't have. But, no, what our goal
is, and what we hope to present to the Congress in our budget proposal is one in which the
overall spending will be no greater in `86 than it was in `85. Now, that means that because some
things are inflexible, such as the interest on the debt, that there will be some particular parts of
government that will be getting less money. There may be some that we think ought to be
eliminated. And so it won't be a freeze in the sense of freezing every item of spending in the
budget at its previous level -- some will be increased; some will be decreased; some will be
eliminated. But the total we're aiming at will be no increase in overall spending.

Defense Spending and Social Security

Q. Many people on the Hill -- and many Republicans as well as Democrats -- are saying this:
They're saying that because of your feeling that defense spending has to grow at the rate, or close
to the rate intended, and because of what you've said about Social Security and other things like
that, that it's impossible to reach even that goal.

The President. No. Let me take two items: defense to begin with. For 1986, the Defense
Department itself has come in with a bigger cut than had been asked in the original plan that came
over from OMB. The difficulty there, however, is in the out years. And I think that Defense has a
legitimate argument about not setting figures. Now, you know we're required anymore by
Congress -- and I have to tell you, having been 8 years in the budgeting process in California, I do
not look with great favor upon this idea that you're supposed to project for the next 5 years what
your budgets are going to be.

And with Defense, their argument is that no one, with regard to defense spending, can tell you
what the necessities are going to be down the road or in years ahead. What if a potential
adversary does something in the coming year that forces your hand to have to meet, in some way,
with an additional defense capability or whatever? So Defense has done it for this year, and then
has expressed the inability -- they have to project some figures, but those figures are meaningless
for the out years. But they've done that.

Now, as for Social Security, here again I'd like to point out with regard to Social Security that
while Social Security is included in the unified budget -- and that, again, by an edict of Congress
-- Social Security is totally funded by a payroll tax. And that payroll tax cannot be used for any
other part of government. In other words, if you somehow reduced Social Security -- actually,
Social Security's running a surplus over and above its present income, but that surplus goes into
their trust fund. It cannot be used to fund some other department of government.

Q. There's been some indication that an administration official who met with a group of reporters
yesterday indicated that you might be willing to accept some kind of freeze on cost-of-living
adjustments for Social Security recipients if Congress gets together on the idea.

The President. No, I think whoever that individual was referring to was someplace here in our
own meetings -- and there have been hours of them on the budget thing. My own remark on one
occasion that, obviously, if Congress was -- because there were stories that Congress was
targeting and said something should be done about that -- that if Congress, en masse came down
on the side of, say, reducing or holding off on the COLA, the cost-of-living increase, you know,
what would I be able to do about that?

Now, a veto is only possible if there's a chance that your veto would be upheld. And I never
remark about possible vetoes until whatever legislation we're talking about comes down to my
desk and I see it. But that was the only remark. But again, as I say, you can't blame any of the
deficit on Social Security.

Q. Are you saying that they would have to be able to pass it over your veto in order for that to
happen? Or that -- --

The President. Well, I'm saying I'm waiting to see what is Congress' attitude about that.

Q. But you might be willing to change your previous position on that if it looked like an
overwhelming number of Congressmen really felt this was necessary?

The President. No, I feel committed to what I said about Social Security before: That this attempt
during the campaign, as they did in 1982, to charge that I had secret plans for reducing Social
Security -- I had no such plans, I have no such plans, and I see no reason to target Social Security
when it plays no part in the deficit.

Q. So that in fact, you're basically not encouraging this idea very much?

The President. No, no.

Personnel Changes in the White House and the Cabinet

Q. Some of the conservatives in town have been watching what's been going on with your
administration, especially since the election, and they see Bill Clark is going to go back to
California, and they see that Ed Meese is going to go to the Justice Department, and from their
initial comments, they're not going to be any much more happy with Don Regan than they are
with Jim Baker. And they're afraid that there are not going to be any true believers in this White
House in the second term. Should they be concerned?

The President. No, I don't think so, because the true believer in the White House is sitting here in
the Oval Office. And no one has been whittling at me or trying to change my philosophy since I've
been here.

But now, the case, for example, of Ed Meese going over to Justice. Well, he's been a Counsellor
to me, and we've been together for a great many years, as you well know. Well, being my
Attorney General -- [laughing] -- does not remove him from my being able to seek his counsel
whenever I feel like doing so.

As for Don Regan coming over here, I don't know how anyone can complain about him,
ideologically or philosophically. He has been as loyal to everything that I've wanted to do as
anyone that I could name.

Q. So you think that this is not something they should worry so much about?

The President. No. And sometimes I wonder if some of those very vocal conservatives are really
conservatives in conservatives' eyes. They're not in mine.

Q. One of the people they would like to see you find a place for is Mrs. Kirkpatrick.

The President. I want to find a place for Mrs. Kirkpatrick.

Q. Have you found one yet?

The President. We'll be talking again after the Inaugural. I could quite understand. She's been
longer in her post at the U.N. than anyone who ever held that job. And it is a job in which you can
find yourself saying, ``Enough, already.'' But I am hoping that I can keep her in the
administration.

Q. With all these changes, how do you feel about this? You're going to enter your second term
with a rather changed cast of characters around here. And a lot of people you've dealt for with a
long time, really, like -- --

The President. Yes.

Q. -- -- Ed and Mike are not going to be here.

The President. Well, Ed's going to be here. As I say, he's within reach. He'll still be a member of
the Cabinet. He'll just be sitting in a different chair. And Mike, I can understand his wanting to
leave now for the private sector. But this isn't as many changes as some administrations have
had.

Q. It's been remarkably stable up till now.

The President. Yes. And I have been gratified by that, because everyone that I asked to serve, I
told them, as I told the public, that I recognize that they -- many of them, most of them -- would
be coming at a great personal sacrifice. And I could not expect them to contract in for the run of
the show. And so they've all known that when the time came that they felt they had to return to
their own lives, I would understand, and I'd try to replace them with someone equally qualified.
And I'm just gratified that we have so many still here. And some of the moves are just, as I say,
changing slots, but still here in government.

Q. Let me ask you about this latest change. Is this correct that you didn't know what was going
on till they came to you yesterday?

The President. [Laughing] They weren't ready to come to me until yesterday.

All I know is that it was -- originally, it was Don Regan's idea, and he'd talked to Jim. Jim has
always -- and has let me know -- he has always wanted, if something opened up, a Cabinet post.
And he's been on a long stretch, 4 full years here in that job.

Q. You don't think he encouraged the Secretary with this idea?

The President. No, as a matter of fact, it was Don's idea. And Don himself felt that he'd had
enough of what he was doing, that he wanted a change. So I was -- --

Q. Were you easily convinced?

The President. What?

Q. Were you easily convinced?

The President. Well, Don came and we had a talk about it, and then I had a talk with Jim. I
wanted to make sure that this was something that both of them were very happy about and
wanted to do. And frankly, I thought it was a great idea. It sure beat having them decide to go
back to private life.

Tax Reform Program

Q. Now that you have Mr. -- we're going to have Don Regan over here, are you going to have his
tax plan over here, too? Are you going to -- --

The President. [Laughing] No, that'll be Jim's to sell up on the Hill. But I'm quite sure that Don
will be most helpful on that because -- --

Q. Are you going to endorse it, basically, in your State of the Union speech?

The President. I'm going to speak of the need for simplifying taxes. I'm not going to get into great
details, as I will in the subsequent State of the Union Address. But the tax program -- and
incidentally, some of your colleagues in the press and particularly columnists have been sniping
that I'm dangling in the wind here, and all the momentum has stopped because we haven't been
doing anything with that. That's not true.

We realized, all of us agreed, that the first priority had to be the budget. And we've been spending
hours and hours -- we've had no time to go on to something else. When that's done, then we go at
the tax program. And that's one that -- just like the budget -- we're going to have to look at
everything that has been recommended, treat some of them, I'm sure, as options, and then decide
what form we want to take. I think it's been one of the best tax studies that's ever been made.

Q. But you're not ready to endorse a lot of the specifics in it yet?

The President. Well, we haven't had time to do as we've done with the budget, to sit down with it
and say, ``All right, point by point, let's go through it.'' I haven't even done that. I have a copy of
the plan on my desk. And while I've read a summary, I haven't been able to do that because my
mind is too filled with the budget.

Federal Budget

Q. Could you tell us the level of your confidence that you can enact a plan along the lines you
describe and meet the deficit reduction targets that you've set?

The President. Yes, I think we can. Yes. And the goal is one thing that I will be saying publicly is
that -- there's never been any thought on the part of any of us that after 50 years of built-in,
structural deficit spending, with only a few exceptional years when it didn't take place -- there's no
way that you can gear segments of the society to government doing many of these things and then
just pull the rug out from them all at once and say, ``We're going to balance the budget in 1 year.''
It just couldn't be done.

It's only fair to do as we will with some programs and say to the people, ``Look, this program is
going to either disappear down here or be reduced down sizably in the years ahead,'' to give
people a chance to adjust to this.

So, yes, we have hit upon a plan of putting us on a declining path as far as the deficits are
concerned to the point that we will be able to project a date certain at which the budget will be
balanced. And then I would hope -- and before then -- I would hope that we would make it
constitutionally impossible for the Government to run another deficit.

Q. Burl, you had a question you wanted -- --

The President's Views on the Media

Q. I was going to ask, given the fairly widespread view, perception, that you don't think too
highly of the media, however one defines it -- I wonder if you would tell us what you do think of
-- not the media, but newspapers and television, specifically, and what their faults are, and what
the -- --

The President. I've never had any complaints about the paper you represent. [Laughing]

Q. Well, that's very kind.

The President. No, I think inside the beltline here, in Washington, is a kind of a company town.
And the great search for leaks, and the premature billing of something as a fact when many times
it isn't a fact, this can become a problem. It can become a problem, for example, on the
international scene to take a leak, some information from someone who won't let their name be
used, and to take this as valid enough to print on the front page of a paper, and then leave us with
having to mend fences with some friendly government that is offended by this misinformation.
And there have been cases of that kind.

I guess all that I would like to say is that I wish that the media that does so much of that -- that
portion of the media -- I wish that they would have an ethic in which they would check that out
with us to see whether it, in some way, might be harmful to our national security, and take our
word for it if we said that it would be. And we'd be willing to explain why it would be. Then we
might not have so many incidents that do cause us problems and set back, sometimes, programs
that have been going forward.

Q. Thank you, Mr. President.

The President's Views on Astrology

Q. Mr. President, is it true that, as I've heard, that you have some interest in astrology? Someone
told me that recently.

The President. [Laughing] No. No, I'll tell you, we knew personally, Nancy and I, the gentleman
out in California that did this for the Los Angeles Times. And so, knowing him and all, it used to
be fun in the morning, in the morning with the paper -- and it's easy for me, because I always read
the comics, and they put it on the same page as the comics -- that I would take delight in telling
Nancy what her day was going to be, and -- [laughing] -- and what mine was supposed to be, and
so forth.

Q. Do you know what the signs are for your Inauguration?

The President. No. No, I haven't done things like -- --

Q. I looked it up. It looked pretty good -- --

The President. It did?

Q. -- -- if you're an Aquarian.

The President. I'm an Aquarian, yes. And of course I do believe that part of astrology since I
found out that there are more Aquarians in the, recorded up there in New York someplace, in the
well-known citizen's list of -- [laughing] -- --

Q. Hall of Fame or -- --

The President. -- -- yes, the Hall of Fame, so I said, ``Well, that must be true, then.''

Q. Thank you very much, Mr. President. We appreciate the time.

The President. You bet.

Note: The interview began at 4:17 p.m. in the Oval Office at the White House. It was released by
the Office of the Press Secretary on January 9.